DOWST WARNS

Decades ago, one of the great names in American punting was that of Robert Saunders Dowst. He and colleague Jay Craig came up with many bright and original thoughts on how to win at betting.

It's timely, even now, to look back at what Dowst and Craig had to say, for much of what they propounded is as relevant and as useful today as it was back then, before the advent of computers to analyse form.

The pair kept exemplary records for some 15 years at one time and deduced from their analysis of the details that it was "impossible" to make money over a period betting on horses unless certain rules were followed. They listed them as follows:

As far as possible, play must not be on the favourites but rather on horses which figure best in the punter's estimation and which are second, third or even longer in the betting.

All bets must be for win only, not for the place.

All bets must be in the same amount, and increased, if at all, only as capital increases, thus rendering the new scale of wagering prospectively permanent.

Dowst and Craig were fervently opposed to progressive staking. They said: "The theory of all progression play is that a winner is bound to come along sooner or later and that if bets are increased progressively after each loss then the ultimate win with the largest amount of the series on the horse will eliminate prior losses, or nearly so."

Dowst and Craig argued that in theory a progression staking plan should work, but they doubted that most punters would find it so, due to a combination of psychological and economic reasons. Now what follows is what Dowst and Craig put forward and you can agree, or disagree, with it. My own view is that you can make progression plans work, but I agree with the two old-time experts that a punter needs skill, discipline and patience to achieve that success.

Dowst and Craig said. "Psychological factors render humanly impossible the increases in bets called for by any such system. If the increase in the amounts bet after losses is in the ratio of 2-4-8-16-32 (doubling up) then a player who starts with $2 bets, and maintains them while winning, after incurring 11 consecutive losses (common rather than uncommon!) must bet $4096 on the 12th horse in order to comply with the progression.

"He will lack the nerve to do it, even if he has the money. And if the progression is less steep than 2-4-8 it will be so much less effective in covering prior losses by one win. No small bettor actually has enough money to carry these progression methods through moderate streaks of losers. Fourteen straight losses on a 2-4-8 doubling up progression would involve losses of $32,766 and call for a 15th bet of $65,532."

The pair said they had often experienced losing runs of 11, 12 and 13 bets, and admitted to one losing run of 19. Dowst, however, said that despite this horrendous run he still made money betting level stakes.

Dowst and Craig went on to say that progression play was merely a gamble on the odds finally paid by a winner at the end of a bad streak. On a 2-4-8 progression, they said, a price of even money had to be secured if losses were to be recouped-and all the factors tended to produce a short-priced winner because of the punter's search for a sure thing to get him out of strife!

Another aspect put forward by Dowst and Craig against progression betting is the fact that all progressions have to start with a small bet (say $1 or $2 per unit) and an early winner earns very little.

On other areas of betting, the pair were just as rigid in their beliefs-but quite sensible, too. Obviously talking about racing some 40 plus years ago, they said then that favourites would win no more than 40 per cent of all races (these days the strike rate is far lower, around the 30 to 32 per cent mark), and that the favourites paid little more than even money.

They said: "It is obvious that a player of favourites, who loses on an average six out of 10 bets, winning only four at a trifle more than even money, is going to be out of pocket. In fact, he must secure about 2/1 average price on 40 per cent winning favourites if he is to make profit."

Dowst himself made a point of insisting that punters should look towards steering clear of favourites, mainly because of what the figures said, and because of the obvious fact that it was difficult to make money from them, unless you were able to hit an enormous 60 per cent plus strike rate.

This was something he managed to do in one six-month period, securing an average price of $1.258 to $1 for each, thus winning a bit over $212 on $10 level stake win bets. In contrast, he scored with 7 winners from 41 bets on non-favourites and lost only $11, despite the abnormally low winning percentage of 17.

Dowst warned that nobody could sustain a 60 per cent strike rate over a considerable period of time-say a year or more. In his statistics for the full year, Dowst said that an average price of $4.276 to $1 on only 42 winning non favourites from 154 meant $675.92 profit, whereas a price of $1.22 to $1 on 52 winning favourites from 116 involved a net loss of $5.60.

Both Dowst and Craig stressed the importance of level stakes, while admitting that most punters abandoned such an approach if they struck a run of losers. Dowst said the average punter began to weaken and to bet less and less each time. The result of this loss of courage was that when the punter did hit a winner his bet was so small in terms of dollars that it yielded him no amount comparable with what he had previously lost!

Had he maintained his earlier and much higher scale of bets the ultimate good-priced winner would have pulled him out or at least gone a long way towards making up losses. So, the moral is, if you're betting level stakes, don't waver!